Fast smartphone self-test for COVID-19 developed

By depositing a saliva sample on a tiny device attached to your smartphone, you could find out in five minutes if you're infected, say pharmacists at Université de Montréal. The researchers are working on a technique to screen for COVID-19 using a smartphone.

"The person would simply put a saliva sample on a device attached to the phone and get the result in a few minutes," said Xavier Banquy, a professor in UdeM's Faculty of Pharmacy whose team came up with the idea.

The device, which has proven its effectiveness in the laboratory but has not yet been tested in a natural setting, would reduce the normal wait time for COVID-19 tests results and also free up public-health resources by identifying asymptomatic carriers early on.

"Take a hospital staff member who has to go to work, for example," Banquy said. "If he or she tests positive, they could stay home and avoid unintentionally spreading the virus in a high-risk environment."

Working with Plasmetrix, a Montreal-based company specializing in biomedical detection, Banquy's team has come up with a prototype of the device. It's small—about five square centimeters, no bigger than a card reader that connects to a phone.

Technically, it's a miniature spectrometer that uses an imaging technique to detect the presence of a viral load in saliva. In a sample from an infected person, there are between 100,000 and one million particles that can be seen by the eye of the device's camera.

"A different path"